SILICON VALLEY BY Mike Judge, John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky FADE IN: CREDIT SEQUENCE: WE SEE SHOT AFTER SHOT of what passes for exciting in the Valley - Billboards about things we don’t understand, packs of geeks, Logo T-shirts. Road signs that read CUPERTINO, MENLO PARK, PALO ALTO. The shit brown colored hills of Mountainview and past the entrances to Facebook, Google, CISCO, etc. We also see quick scenes of people pitching at accelerators, and the video of Steve Balmer ranting onstage. Larry Ellison. Elon Musk with a Rocket. Steve Wozniak trying to groove on his Segway. All mixed together in a high energy montage. EXT. EAST PALO ALTO - HACKER HOUSE WE PAN THROUGH a nondescript neighborhood and end on a not- well-maintained house with a scrubby yard. This could easily be the homestead of upwardly mobile white trash or downwardly mobile professionals. INT. HACKER HOUSE - DAY We pan through the denizens of Hacker House: An East Indian guy, DINESH, who always wears a rugby shirt and is now punching away furiously on his laptop; CALVIN, a black guy with braces and glasses who looks like a younger version of Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger; a fat white guy with a pony tail and a black shirt and black sweat pants, ROLAND, who seems to be drawing a Celtic tattoo on his arm with an ink pen; oddest of all is a skinny Asian fellow, JIN YANG, who is working away at a stand up work station. No matter what they are doing they also are plugged into something else and are eating instant Ramen. We end on our hero, THOMAS. He is incredibly focused as he rapidly types code on a computer screen. His best friend, BIG HEAD (who does have an unusually large noggin), comes up. Big Head is holding a Perplexus (the small ball-shaped game these guys are all obsessed with). BIG HEAD Hey, man, some guys from Zynga are throwing an all-night Perplexus tourney. Maybe we can find some Stanford kids to hustle. Big Head twists and turns the ball, finishing it in a ridiculously fast amount of time. Thomas never breaks his concentration. 2. THOMAS Can’t. Big Head takes a closer look at the screen. BIG HEAD Goddamn, Thomas, that’s a buttload of code. This gets the attention of Jin Yang at the stand-up work station. Tall and skinny, he has a thick Taiwanese accent and pretty much every other word is shit, fuck, motherfucker, and dude. JIAN YANG Sheee-it, mother fucker you can like buy compression software. You don’t have to fucking write that shit. You can buy that shit! BIG HEAD Or download a bootleg. THOMAS None of that CodeAcademy crap for my web site. The whole idea of Pied Piper is based on melody recognition. If it doesn’t work perfectly, no one will want in. So, I am making it perfect. Thomas turns and calls off. THOMAS (CONT’D) Hey, Dinesh, can you test this module for me? DINESH Can I eat your salmon? THOMAS (grudging) OK. Dinesh takes Thomas’s lunch and sits down at the computer and starts running tests. Big Head looks a little hurt. BIG HEAD You’re letting him test your module? Thomas tries to put a positive spin on things. 3. THOMAS You’ve got the Perplexus tourney. I want you to fuck those guys up. This fires up Big Head. He uses some very awkward body English to put a flourish on his Perplexus move. The House Nerd, ERLICH walks in and sees this. ERLICH And you wonder why there are never any girls around here. We see that Erlich is wearing his favorite “I Know HTML -- How To Meet Ladies” shirt. ERLICH (CONT’D) Hey Thomas, can we talk for a second? THOMAS OK. Erlich doesn’t make much eye contact but is still somehow very aggressive. ERLICH Thomas, I’m gonna have to ask you to vacate. THOMAS What? Why? ERLICH You’ve been here six months. I gave you place a to live and plug in. You’ve given me nothing. THOMAS Look, Pied Piper is going to take off. The website is up and running, it works great, it just needs-- Erlich cuts him off. ERLICH Pied Piper is crap. When you pitched it you said, “The Google of Music.” I thought it had “Applications”. THOMAS It does! Have you been on it since I revamped it? (MORE) 4. THOMAS (CONT'D) Once it takes off Pied Piper will be able to search the whole world of recorded music to see if there is a match. If you’re a song writer... or a band... or anything, and you wanted to make sure you weren’t infringing on copy righted material, you could find out in no time. Erlich just gives his head a curt shake. ERLICH First of all, nobody cares about stealing other people’s music. Jesus, they do it on purpose! Jay- Z and Puffy made whole careers on it. THOMAS They didn’t steal it, they had to get permission from the copyright owners... ERLICH They don’t own dick. There’s no money in music anymore. Everyone involved in music is either stealing it or sharing it. They’re all assholes. And they’re all suing each other. To stay here, you have to deliver. Or at least show some promise for fuck’s sake. Erlich motions to Big Head. ERLICH (CONT’D) Like NipAlert. Big Head’s app. It gives you the location of a woman with erect nipples. That’s something people want. How’s that coming along? Big Head gives him two thumbs up. BIG HEAD Almost ready to enter Beta Phase. Thomas turns back to Erlich. He is desperate and fishing. THOMAS Look, I want to change the world. Make it a better place... 5. Erlich knows he has to pay lip service to this trope. ERLICH We all want to change the world and make it better. Like I did when I developed Accutran. A lot of companies use a lot of different software to aggregate social media feedback -- Frontier Airlines just happened to like mine. Thomas digs in. THOMAS You can’t just kick me out. When I signed up I was promised a month’s notice if I had to leave. It’s in writing. Erlich looks pissed. ERLICH Then I am giving you notice. I hope you’re happy. You know, when I sold Accutran there were a lot of things I could do with my money. But I wanted to give back. I started this place to do something big. Really make a difference. Like Steve. THOMAS Jobs or Wozniak? ERLICH (duh) Jobs. Now, suppose Steve came back to us all reincarnated, because he was a Buddhist you know, and he showed up here at The Hacker Hostel looking for a place to help him get on his feet so he could launch the next big tech revolution. What could I do? There’s no room for STEVE. Can you believe this? I have to tell Steve to fuck off because there would be no room at the Inn because you and Pied Piper are here gumming up the works. See what I’m saying Thomas? THOMAS That Steve Jobs is Jesus? 6. ERLICH He was Buddist! THOMAS He was a poser! He didn’t even write code. Erlich looks stunned -- this is the only thing that could shut him up. EXT. LUXURY SHUTTLE VAN - MORNING Thomas rides the luxury shuttle van to work with Big Head. The Boodle Channel plays on closed circuit TVs and on it we see GAVIN BELSON, CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) of Boodle and a true running sore of a human being. He talks about how Boodle is making the world a better place. GAVIN BELSON (V.O.) Boodle brings the world to everyone. Boodle is everything. And that’s what allows Boodle to “make happy.” Gavin then urges his workers to sit back and relax (but also be sure to enjoy the complimentary energy bars and energy drinks and energy gum onboard). We see everyone chomping and drinking away as the channel then shows all the ways Boodle “Makes Happy”. Thomas is on his iPad looking at rentals. THOMAS These rents are insane. $2800 a month, $4500 a month -- with five people! BIG HEAD You forget how goddamn expensive it is here. Thomas looks miserable. THOMAS I don’t want to have to go back to St. Louis. I can barely talk to people in St. Louis. My parents still live in St. Louis! BIG HEAD You think Oklahoma City’s any better? (MORE) 7. BIG HEAD (CONT'D) And I’m going to be the next one booted. Ever since GoolyBib landed two million in seed money Erlich’s been on the warpath about monetizing. THOMAS GoolyBib? That Indian guy from Dropbox you were hanging out with? BIG HEAD No, it’s a startup -- GoolyBib. I think it’s a real estate app... or maybe it’s that traffic one. THOMAS Fuck. Every day somebody in the valley is hitting it big. But not me. If I can’t pull it off now, when there are billions of dollars just LOOKING FOR A START UP, it might not ever happen. BIG HEAD Yeah, no kidding. THOMAS What are you worried about? Erlich loves Nip Alert. BIG HEAD He’s just blinded by boobs. Once he scratches the surface he’s going to see there’s giant holes in this thing. It’s based on self reporting.